Stanford Law Professor Jeffrey Ball gives his perspective on renewable energy and nuclear power conservation and why it's important to encourage tech investment in the field.

On the subject of energy, there is always fuel for argument, particularly over which renewable energy is most likely to prevail, how nuclear can best regain its footing, and how governments can encourage energy conservation. The Wall Street Journal put these questions to The Experts, an exclusive group of industry and thought leaders who engage in in-depth online discussions of topics raised in the Energy Report. Edited excerpts follow. Read more at wsj.com/reports.

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Encourage Tech Investment
Tweak regulations that get in the way of private investors bankrolling energy-efficiency improvements where those investors think they can make money. Another idea is changing today's electric-utility regulations, which generally reward power companies for selling more power. By incentivizing power companies not just to sell more juice, but also to deploy technologies that help their customers use their juice more efficiently, the government could enlist powerful private forces in the push to curb energy waste.

—Jeffrey Ball, scholar-in-residence, Stanford University's Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance